


Limbo

by adelaide_rain



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Community: ae_match, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-28
Updated: 2011-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-28 08:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adelaide_rain/pseuds/adelaide_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cobb wasn't the only one who had been to Limbo; Arthur and Eames had been there too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Limbo

Arthur woke up with a start to find himself in cold water, salty against his tongue as the waves splashed into his face. Gasping, he sat up, head snapping from side to side as he tried to figure out where he was. There was nothing but sea and the beach for miles, he couldn’t see anything else in any direction.

“Arthur!” Eames was already on the beach and he strode towards Arthur, offering a strong hand to help him up. The shirt and slacks that Eames was wearing were soaked through, the pale grey shirt slightly transparent when wet. The peek of nipples and tattoos beneath the material distracted Arthur for a moment until he looked down at himself and bit back a sigh; the sweater was ruined and the silk tie too.

“What the hell happened?” The touch of fear that drove the pitch of Eames’s voice higher dragged Arthur’s attention away from his Dior Homme cashmere and he looked up to see Eames’ eyes darting around nervously.

“I... Don’t remember... How did we get here?”

“How did we- Are you bloody kidding?” He was panicking.

“Eames, calm down.” Arthur took his hands and squeezed them. The touch seemed to calm him fractionally so Arthur kissed him, tasting salt water on his lips and on his tongue. Arthur knew from experience that nothing relaxed Eames down like a well-placed kiss. It worked; Eames rested his forehead against Arthur’s and wrapped his arms around his waist. Arthur smiled, feeling safe and content in the circle of his muscular arms. He let himself enjoy the moment, the feel of the strong body against his. Enjoyed it a little too much; he felt himself getting hard and ground his hips against Eames.

To his surprise, Eames stepped away, frowning at Arthur. There was no other time that Arthur could remember in which Eames had turned down Arthur’s advances.

“You really don’t remember, do you?” Eames’s voice was very soft.

There was a long minute which was filled only with the roar of the ocean - not even a bird or airplane; any sign of life other than the man standing before him. Things started to fall into place in Arthur’s mind, the gears turning and the nonchalance that he had been feeling since waking up fell away quickly, collapsing like a house of cards.

“We’re dreaming.”

“We were dreaming. The fucking architect messed up and the bridge on the third level was weak as tissue paper. Our car fell about 50 feet onto concrete - not my favourite way to die, I have to say. But it should have woken us up. Why aren’t we awake?”

The question forced a gasp from Arthur and he spun around, looking in all directions with new desperation. His beat thumped in his chest, a deep tribal beat. There had to be something here, there had to, there had to. There was nothing, anywhere, just huge and empty blankness as far as the eye could see – further than the eye could see. There was nothing anywhere; nothing everywhere.

When Eames reached out a hand to gently touch his arm, Arthur felt his knees give way at the same time as his panic did and he fell to the sand, hopelessness washing over him.

“Arthur?” Eames sat beside him, concern in his eyes now all for Arthur, his terror at their mysterious surroundings put to the side until he knew that his husband was alright. Arthur threw himself at Eames, burying his head in the crook of his neck. Sometimes he forgot just how much he loved him but then he would act like this, like Arthur was the only thing in the world that mattered. “Arthur, tell me what’s wrong.”

“We’re in limbo.”

“...what?”

“Unconstructed dreamspace,” he whispered into the skin of Eames’s neck, barely believing his own words. “If a sedative is too strong, death won’t wake you up, you’ll just fall deeper. And if there is no dream planned for the next level, then you end up in limbo.” Arthur lifted his head to look into Eames’s face. “But it’s just an idea, no one has ever actually been to limbo-”

“This is more than a bloody idea,” Eames murmured, looking out at the endless nothingness around them. “How long are we stuck down here?”

“Until the sedative wears off.” Arthur hoped that Eames wouldn’t notice him dodging the question.

“And how long is that?” Eames was nowhere near an idiot and noticed the dodge immediately.

It was a long moment before Arthur spoke again, his mind trying to cope with the idea that he was in limbo, that it wasn’t just an idea: he was here and so was Eames, and they didn’t have a way out. “...I don’t know,” he said, very quietly. “It could be forever.”

“Forever,” Eames said flatly, looking out at the waves before turning back to Arthur and giving him a nervous smile. “I don’t like the sound of forever, darling, even with you.”

Arthur frowned; he felt vaguely offended. “I don’t know if we have much choice in the matter.”

“So what do we do?”

Arthur looked over Eames’s shoulder at a patch of beach no different than any other and concentrated. When Eames said he didn’t have much in the way of imagination, he was right. But he was an avid learner and he could combine with panache things that he had seen and known; and so effortlessly from the sand grew a Victorian-style house with cream siding, pthalo blue shutters and grey tiles.

“Starting with somewhere to live seems to be an intelligent start,” Arthur said, turning to Eames in time to see the impressed rise of Eames’s eyebrows.

“Right you are, Arthur.”

===

That first day they talked about killing themselves in the hope that it might kick them back to the dream level above, if not the waking world. But as Arthur had said, no-one had ever been to Limbo and it was too dangerous a proposition.

The first night, they climbed into a bed that was based on the one in the hotel in Toronto in which they had spent their first night as husbands. Eames kissed him, brushed his skin with fingertips that were ever-so-slightly rough and Arthur’s back arched as those fingers pushed his pyjama pants down, freeing him to the cool night air. When Eames straddled him, trapping his hands over his head with one strong hand, Arthur didn’t fight him.

“If you want me to stop, I will,” Eames murmured to him, looking down at him with sincere eyes.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

Using that imagination he was so proud of, Eames dreamed up some lube and Arthur couldn’t laugh at the pleased grin he gave as he showed him the red-and-white tube.

“Just get on with it,” Arthur told him and his command fizzled into a moan as Eames did as he was told.

Just as pain was as real in a dream as in reality, so pleasure was every bit as real. Feeling Eames inside him was just as mind-blowing as it had ever been; the hands that brought him to a bone-shaking orgasm the same perfect mix of gentleness and pressure.

“That was amazing,” Eames said when he regained the capacity for speech, spooning up against Arthur’s body and kissing his shoulder blade.

“It really was.”

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier, Arthur. It’s just… nothing lasts forever. Especially nothing as good as being with you.” There was wistfulness in Eames’s voice that hurt as sharply a stiletto blade sinking into his heart. Arthur intertwined his fingers with Eames’s where they were designing little patterns on his stomach.

“I’m not going anywhere, Eames.”

===

Neither of them went anywhere, not for thirty-five years. It was Eames who suggested it in the end. He had been thinking about it for years; taking every bit of information that he knew about dream science and about the way people’s minds worked and formulated it into a theory. The gist of it was: dying in limbo should kick you through any layers of structured dreams above you and right into waking. For a person who was less experienced than they were, it might be a problem but their minds automatically associated dying in a dream with waking up. They knew it was a dream, ergo they would wake.

Arthur had questioned it at first but Eames was persuasive. They were getting old now, in their sixties. They were aging as they would in the real world. What would happen in thirty years, Eames asked? Less than that – how long before they wouldn’t even be able to try it? As time ticked on, they wouldn’t die of old age; their minds would just unravel and when the sedative did finally wear off their minds would be damaged beyond all thoughts of repair.

They were standing on the roof of one of the tallest buildings that they had created; fairly modest at twenty-seven storeys but it would do the trick.

Arthur peered over the edge at the spotless street below and felt a whisper of dizziness. It was a long way down; but that was the point. He walked over to Eames, who looked wonderfully debonair with his silvery hair and deeply worn laugh lines. For the occasion he was wearing a black suit and tie and a crisp white shirt. Although some of his muscle had ran to softness over the years, he looked wonderful and Arthur smiled, reaching out for his hands. They kissed, long and lingering and tender.

“I love you, Arthur.”

“I love you, Eames.”

“It’s been a hell of a time here with you. Three and a half decades…”

“We can do it all again when we wake up.”

Eames smiled over at him and they walked to the edge of the building. “Shall we?” He gestured at the empty air in front of them with the hand that wasn’t holding Arthur’s, as though he were suggesting that they enter a restaurant. They stepped onto the ledge together. Neither of them looked down as they took another step.

===

The rest of the team didn’t ask questions of them; the architect had missed several other key points and the extractor was furious. Arthur and Eames took their leave quietly and only when they were back in their hotel room did they check their totems repeatedly and made love for hours with all the vigour of young men.

Lying in the bed after Arthur stared at Eames. It was so strange to see him young again. He touched the barely-visible creases around his eyes and mouth that would become so much more pronounced when he was older, stroked fingers through hair that was still a rich brown.

“I don’t think we should tell anyone about it.”

Arthur was surprised at the words. “About limbo?”

“Yes. It wasn’t supposed to happen; and… it was ours. I want to keep it that way.”

Not really sure how best to reply to the request, Arthur just shrugged and agreed to it.

Only later when his best friend threw herself from a balcony did he regret it.


End file.
